shootings

Last night was my very first attendance at a Girl Geek Dinner. I had a really great time, met some very interesting people, and will totally be going back. Having said that (which I felt I needed to first in case this turns into a bit of a rant, and you don’t read to the end) there were some things that I found a little odd.

There was the guy (who shall remain anonymous, mostly as I don’t remember his name) (yes, guy, at a Girl Geek Dinner, I’ll come onto that later) who interrupted one of the speakers and several questioners in a rather intimidating way. Clearly I have no objection to men being involved in most (but not all) women’s events, and it can be a good thing, however I do feel that it is important that women should never feel marginalized at our own events by men trying to take over the floor, nor do I think excess amounts of time should be spent addressing a specific man’s view of our view on the world (of course talking about men and their perspectives in general is quite different). So this annoyed me. If you read this, and I’m sure you know who you are, this is nothing personal, just I felt it might have been the wrong venue to address your questions in.

So, men, know your place at women’s events, keep quiet and let us do the talking!

I was also a little shocked (as Mel said I would be) with the lack of young women there. Afterall there must be hundreds of us in London, and yet there were just a handful (out of maybe 50 women in total) of us there. It would be really nice to encourage (somehow) more young women to get involved. I’m certainly going to start pushing hard on my College friends to come.

There we go, some thoughts, hopefully not a rant, and a promise that I will return.